Breathing is Easy
by Azrael DiAngelo
Summary: No one has called him Castiel in a long time. Based on Ben Edlund's original pitch for what Cas would be like in The End.


"Cas? It's Dean."

He knew a Dean once, he thinks.

Light brown hair. Green eyes. A crack in the smirk that he frequently wore.

He had thought he could fix it, sew the ends of his lips into his cheeks and lift them up into a genuine smile. He wanted to make his eyes light up as bright as his soul, but—

The insect runs away from him again, using his aloofness as a chance to escape. It never understood that there wasn't one, yet it always tried anyway. Admirable.

He squashes it with his palm, rubbing its remains against the floor.

"Do you remember me?"

The first casualty of their camp of misfits was a woman that went by the name of Eleanor— _Please, just Ellie, sweetheart. Eleanor makes me sound old_ —and her unborn child, Jacob. Sam attempted to console the husband and older sister she left behind. Dean drowned himself in a bottle and fell asleep in his lap. He just stroked Dean's hair and prayed to an empty sky. He also went along with Dean's next plan—to head toward a more secure location—and stroked his hair as he sobbed through the second, third, and fourth casualties. A month later, Sam left. Dean didn't care about security as much after that. He cried less. Still smirked though, with deep crevices replacing laugh lines. Still found him in his lap.

He remembered everything and it was too much.

Even the man right in front of him was merely a memory. He wasn't real. He wasn't from this time.

The liquid stain on the hard wood floor gathers itself and morphs into a cockroach again, eager and new. Mere seconds into existence and it's already trying to pick a fight, scuttling back and forth between his two barrier hands.

"Castiel."

That makes him pause long enough for the roach to slip past him. It travels halfway across the room—a new record—before he wills it back slowly, dragging its hind legs against the floor to where he sits cross-legged in the corner.

If names had power, he would have less than he did now, and this was just on the bare line between human and not quite. He can't perform miracles or reverse something as trivial as a paper cut. However he can give life (and death) to small creatures. No one seems to see the value of this though. Once you become a burden to society, you're labeled as crazy.

Bullets hurt now, he's noticed. Believe him he's tried, but at the time he thought proximity would affect his chances of feeling anything. Apparently he's lucky.

" _You must have an angel watching over you," some no name, faceless stranger that would die in two days, said to him. "Keeping you safe."_

He introduced himself. Told them to call him Cas and nothing else. Because that is what he was now. The name caught fire, vigorously sweeping through the camp until even Dean kept it on the tip of his tongue, letting it roll roughly between bedsheets and pillow talk lacking the actual talking.

No one has called him Castiel in a long time.

The bug struggles in his grip, immediately running along the back of his hand. If they were ever really destined to leave, cockroaches wouldn't have the ability to stick to you, he thinks.

He can feel Dean, the other one from better times where time actually mattered, staring at the side of his head, cataloging every feature of his pathetic image.

It is with an inevitable shock that he realizes that he isn't quite certain what he looks like anymore. He remembers what he used to and aspired to be, however. His vessel, now body, had blue eyes. Unruly black hair. Stubble on a jaw that was always clenched.

He strokes his face for a moment, feeling a thick beard in its place. He wonders if the eons have caught up to him; if he has grays now.

Suddenly, there is another pair of hands gently cupping the sides of his face, turning his head toward the source of the touching. Dean kneels on the floor in front of him, caressing him, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles on his eyelids.

That damn cockroach is free again. He lets it be.

"Babe?" Dean whispers, searching his eyes for answers.

He's never really noticed but his eyes are actually hazel, not green. He's also never called him that. Not when he has an arm wrapped around his waist or they have to mutter an excuse as to why they're both late to breakfast, has Dean Winchester ever used a term of endearment directed at him. You don't treasure what you need. You don't cherish the only things life has offered you. You take it for granted. You ask for more, you greedy bastard.

"What happened to you, angel?"

It had been a month into this affair, this secret arrangement that they kept. Dean would come late to breakfast with several women, but he was profiling them, he's noticed. The first had blue eyes. The second didn't even bother brushing their coarse, black hair. The third never appeared in public with him, insistent that he deserved better than a girl that would never let go of a large, bloodstained trench coat. Others were prudish, or stubborn, or gullible. Dean always came back for the real thing, confused as to why he ever left.

The whole situation made him feel isolated, but in a special, just-between-us kind of way. One day he wished that it didn't, however. Other girls, other angels, didn't turn shades of black, blue, red, green, and purple. But maybe this was Dean's way of claiming him, as he had done to him years ago. As he said, gullible.

It was going to be a discreet exit from existence. A dark room. A gun. Shaky hands with no one to steady them.

Everyone thought he was useless, that he didn't even know how to shoot. Of course not. That's why the kids went to him, begging him to teach them, right? Because he was a lousy shot?

Let's teach them one final lesson, he thinks. What happens when a...

He lets out a shallow breath that he wasn't aware that he was holding. Brings the cockroach back from under the door, its tiny legs writhing on the ground, trying to break free. What a way to fall. He's jealous of an insect.

Breathing is easy, he thinks. It's when...

What happens when a person forgets why they should, that it becomes difficult.

The roach is in his hand again. The same one from before. He can revive and kill, but for the life of him, he can't seem to create something that never was.

Dean holds him close to his chest, breathing in his long faded scent. He doesn't hug him back, but for entirely different reasons than the Cas he's used to.

Instead he crushes the bug again, rubbing its remains against the cold floor.


End file.
